Some of our readership out there may be players or ex-players of Pocket Empires, a pretty popular medievil themed empire building game in which players can get ahead quicker by donating money for gems. We’ve never played it ourselves as none of us here are keen on the pay for resources model, but we’ve heard very good things about the game. Sadly, though, many of our readers (particularly those who are developers who have published apps to the market) will be more familiar with Pocket Empires through the sheer volume spam comments related to the game that have been appearing under completely unrelated games over the last few days. That, in itself, is bad enough, but what if the developer had actually been encouraging users to spam by rewarding them with in-game resources? Well, sadly, that’s an allegation that’s being made by a number of members of the development community, who are accusing Pocket Play, the developers of Pocket Empires, of offering it’s playerbase gems in exchange for leaving Pocket Empire related comments in the Android Market.
There have been a number of threads (see here and here) on the Android Market forum, and other Android related forums relating to the Pocket Empires spam. One commenter claims to have gotten their hands on a chat log of Pocket Play actively encouraging people to spam, here’s an excerpt from the alleged chat:-
[4/18/2010 9:05:19 PM] Pocket Play: Any players wanna help me out?
[4/18/2010 9:05:20 PM] Michael Lytle: aw ok my bad
[4/18/2010 9:05:23 PM] Saltrix: how so?
[4/18/2010 9:05:29 PM] Michael Lytle: ill help
[4/18/2010 9:05:40 PM] Jf: how
[4/18/2010 9:05:40 PM] Pocket Play: Could use some help advertising our game on the market. I’ll reward anyone who helps with 200 gems.
[4/18/2010 9:05:57 PM] Michael Lytle: hell i cant donate so what u need
[4/18/2010 9:05:57 PM] Kevin: what about country wars
[4/18/2010 9:06:04 PM] Jf: how would i do that
[4/18/2010 9:06:38 PM] Kevin: put the purchase of gems on Droid market and I will buy some
[4/18/2010 9:07:20 PM] Pocket Play: Basically, I need some people to go to apps and post >>one time<< per app about our game.
[4/18/2010 9:07:24 PM] Pocket Play: So we can spread the news.
[4/18/2010 9:07:51 PM] Pocket Play: Not every app needs to be done but just some.
[4/18/2010 9:07:59 PM] Jf: sure count on me doing that
[4/18/2010 9:07:59 PM] Michael Lytle: done and done ill post every where without my reference code
[4/18/2010 9:08:16 PM] Saltrix: no spamming for me, sorry
[4/18/2010 9:08:33 PM] Michael Lytle: 4pca ill start on droid defense
[4/18/2010 9:08:39 PM] Michael Lytle: lol
[4/18/2010 9:08:43 PM] Pocket Play: Just post something like..
[4/18/2010 9:09:14 PM] Pocket Play: “Want an awesome online medieval war game? Search up Pocket Empires in the market. 40,000 and counting.”
[4/18/2010 9:12:25 PM] haakjes-pocketplay: i’m off, good night all
[4/18/2010 9:12:30 PM] Kevin: how do u add comment in an app
[4/18/2010 9:12:52 PM] Pocket Play: You have to rate it first
[4/18/2010 9:12:56 PM] Pocket Play: Rate everything you comment on 5 stars
[4/18/2010 9:16:10 PM] Kevin: everyone is using this to try and gems they r using their referal code not trying to grow the game greedy people
[4/18/2010 9:17:15 PM] Michael Lytle: Try pocket empire’s online its free and addictive rts on the phone oh by the way its FREE Search pe. For what is one of the hottest games on the droid . thats my post sound good?
[4/18/2010 9:17:41 PM] Saltrix: except its not really a rts, i dont think
[4/18/2010 9:18:02 PM] Michael Lytle: its a real time stratagy
[4/18/2010 9:18:09 PM] Michael Lytle: lol pardon spelling
[4/18/2010 9:18:41 PM] Saltrix: i guess maybe it is, but if you told me that ahead of time, i would expect something different than this
[4/18/2010 9:19:16 PM] Jf: i posted comments on two games on the market advertising empires
[4/18/2010 9:19:45 PM] Pocket Play: Sounds awesome Michael
[4/18/2010 9:20:27 PM] Michael Lytle: lol i guess its a difference of opinion. cause all i play is rts and thats why im stuck on this game
[4/18/2010 9:20:44 PM] Pocket Play: Hehe =) I’m more of an mmo player but rts is awesome too
[4/18/2010 9:20:58 PM] Jf: i still haven’t figured out how to use the referral codes
[4/18/2010 9:21:11 PM] Michael Lytle: ne ways did 6 posts going to do more
[4/18/2010 9:23:42 PM] Jf: anyone been able to defeat a monster castle yet
[4/18/2010 9:23:53 PM] Pocket Play: <— But I dont count
[4/18/2010 9:24:03 PM] Pocket Play: Michael whats your ref code
[4/18/2010 9:24:06 PM] Jf: lol
[4/18/2010 9:24:17 PM] Michael Lytle: 4pca
[4/18/2010 9:24:28 PM] Michael Lytle: im aralin
[4/18/2010 9:25:35 PM] Michael Lytle: at work and paypal didnt work on my phone: (
[4/18/2010 9:26:02 PM] Pocket Play: all good.
[4/18/2010 9:26:10 PM] Pocket Play: Theres your 220, keep up the good work
If these comments are true, then this is not a good way to go about things. There are multiple entries in the Android publishers Terms of Service which this sort of campaign could arguably be breaching, for example:
“3.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that
interferes with or disrupts the Market (or the servers and networks
which are connected to the Market). You agree that you will not use
any of the Products found on the Market in a way that interferes or
disrupts any servers, networks, or websites operated by Google or any
third-party.”
and
“3.8 You agree that Google and/or third parties own all right, title
and interest in and to the Market and the Products available through
the Market, including without limitation all applicable Intellectual
Property Rights in the Products. “Intellectual Property Rights” means
any and all rights existing under patent law, copyright law, trade
secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, and any and all
other proprietary rights worldwide. You agree that you will not, and
will not allow any third party to, (i) copy, sell, license,
distribute, transfer, modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative
works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise
attempt to derive source code from the Products, unless otherwise
permitted, (ii) take any action to circumvent or defeat the security
or content usage rules provided, deployed or enforced by any
functionality (including without limitation digital rights management
or forward-lock functionality) in the Products, (iii) use the Products
to access, copy, transfer, transcode or retransmit content in
violation of any law or third party rights, or (iv) remove, obscure,
or alter Google’s or any third party’s copyright notices, trademarks,
or other proprietary rights notices affixed to or contained within the
Products. ”
and also
Malicious Products
Don’t transmit viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, malware, or any other items of a destructive nature. We don’t allow content that harms or interferes with the operation of the networks, servers, or other infrastructure of Google, carriers, or any third-parties. Spam, malicious scripts and password phishing scams are also prohibited on Android Market.
As anger amongst the development community grew, a representative of Pocket Play, Overdestined, took a moment to respond to the criticism as follows:-
Hey everyone. Overdestined from Pocket Empires here. (Head of Customer Service)
Just want to clear up a few things.
First of all, yes that chat log was from Skype. When I put this up I intended for it to be a post on each thread, not spam. This was also after the spam had started.
I don’t think everyone here realizes just how hard it is to get a community of 80,000+ active players (probably 5,000 of which do this) to completely stop.
Also, the developers didn’t start this and it is ending soon as we just sent a system-wide message out.
The Skype log was a huge mistake and it wasn’t mean to crank up the spam level, nor is this some super mastermind plot myself and the other staff members thought up.
So I would like to apologize about this, and also i’d like to inform you that this will be over (at least a majority of it) extremely soon.
If you play, please continue to enjoy our game. If you don’t, give it a shot. You’ll be surprised.
Thanks for understanding.
-Overdestined
So, Pocket Play claim that the spam was not as a result of a request by any member of their development team. Fair enough if true, and no one can say with any certainty that Pocket Play were responsible, but the evidence does seem to suggest that players have been actively rewarded for spamming the Android Market with Pocket Empire related comments. At the end of the day, I daresay most people are “spam-blind” to this sort of thing, and will automatically assume the worst of a title that is being actively spammed, certainly, there seems to be a growing resentment towards Pocket Empires amongst the Android community.
Pocket Play have taken steps to try and remedy the problem, having recently changed their homepage to ask that people stop leaving Pocket Empire spam in Android Market comments.
Hello Pocket Empire builders!
As most of you know we recently offered a promotion for your one-time assistance in an advertising campaign to help boost our Android Market rating.  The results were overwhelming and beyond our expectations, and for that we are very grateful.
The number of players joining the ranks is growing everyday and with all the new players we are better able to evaluate certain aspects of the game. One aspect that has been re-evaluated is the manner in which gems are obtained. Some players, so eager to earn additional gems took the initiative of referring the game in the comment section of other games and applications in the android market. While we certainly appreciate referrals of friends or by word-of-mouth we cannot support, or condone the idea of referring our game in the comment sections of other games and applications. As such, any player who does use another game’s comment section to publish their referral code, or promote PE will be banned from PE for 1 day. A second offense will be more severe. Please be aware that such spam may result in the banning of PE from the market.
This is exactly what the community wanted from Pocket Play, an official request to stop the spam, however, the damage (in the eyes of the community, Pocket Play may see it as a successful advertising campaign…) has already been done. This does highlight how open the Android Market comments system is to abuse, and, we fully expect further spam campaigns (whether or not they are sanctioned by the developers) to crop up, but there’s probably very little that can be done about that.
Point to note: you write in your writeup that a user “claimed” to have gotten the chat log, implying that it may not be correct. However, the post you yourself repeat later on shows the PE representative admitting to having participated in the chat.
It’s also worth noting that for all their talk, the PE developers have so far done nothing to curb the problem, and refuse to discontinue the incentive system that they used to propagate the spam in the first place (which they could have done immediately, if they were at all serious about stopping this).
The most disgraceful part in all this is perhaps Google’s, who continue to ignore the problem despite the complaints. It reflects poorly – once again – on their willingness to listen to the developers who build the apps for the Android market.
We will definitely see more spam campaigns. Why not – when Google refuses to take action against those who spam the market?
This article adresses an aggravation that has been showing up more & more throughout the market. I, personally do not have time for RTS/MMO stuff & did not even know that Pocket whatever even existed until self-serving others spammed the market advertising that they were playing the game & leaving their reference code for gems, rubels, whatever. Thanks for the article-the rest of us have been over the spam for some time.
As someone who is in contact with both the developers and customer service reps, but NOT an employee of Pocket-Play, I can say that the whole incident was a terrible misunderstanding. As you can see from the Skype log, the Customer Service Rep did indeed encourage players. That being said, the CSR NEVER intended for players to spam the market and certainly didn’t anticipate the subsequent response, my best guess is that the CSR never thought anyone outside the few people on the skype call would indeed make postings.
In response to the Post by Michael “It’s also worth noting that for all their talk, the PE developers have so far done nothing to curb the problem, and refuse to discontinue the incentive system that they used to propagate the spam in the first place”
This is simply incorrect. The second insert above, from http://www.pocket-play.com clearly states that any players found to be posting in the comment section of another game will be banned. I have played the game and anyone serious about it will suffer a great deal (in-game) if they cannot access their account for 1 day.
Also, I present this as evidence:
http://docs.google.com/drawings/pub?id=1PJru069FUdiF990vKNsQ1h0O5CmsS4H8Mqtpt_Rcii8&w=960&h=720
an in-game message informing all players the referral system has been discontinued. Granted, there was no way for Michael to see this, but the referral system has indeed been discarded.
The point I am attempting to convey is that however you wish to interpret the whole issue of postings on other games and apps comment sections. It was NEVER intended to be spam, nor a viral marketing campaign. If you enjoy this type of games it is an excellent game and Pocket Play worked diligently and honestly to bring it to market.
I would also like to extend my gratitude to the author for composing this article as they did, showing both sides of the issue and not just making it a hit piece.
I have noticed a bunch of spam in the comments of my own small android game. What a douchey thing these “developers” are doing to the market.
Thanks for fucking it up for everyone else. I hope google BANS your kind from the market.
Heres another thought:
How about a bunch of us devs writes an app/game that will REWARD those that give Pocket Empire a 1 star rating?
How do you like THEM apples Pocket Play?
@SG
So you want to create an app for the sole purpose of marketing it in a manner that does exactly what you are purporting to despise? Huh.
Furthermore, as misplaced as it was – a post in your games comment section – in now way affected your rating.
Perhaps the Market should investigate your threat to INTENTIONALLY lower the rating of anther game in the market.
Finally, nice language. Very professional.
Yeah – so the Referral system has been discontinued. It says it all about how sincere Pocket Play has been in their apologies that it took a direct threat from Google to get them to do so.
@Mandalore:
The chat log speaks pretty clearly and can hardly be misunderstood. In addition, users were encouraged to spam by in-game messages. A misunderstanding?
Sorry – I’m not that stupid or naive. And I doubt you are either.
@Mandalore:
It is impossible to comment on games without rating them so yes – bogus ratings from people whose only intent to spam does affect the ratings of his game.
@Michael,
Perhaps I should have been more concise. It comes down to a matter of intent. My position is that the CSR for Pocket-Play never intended for the comments to become so wide spread. I am not saying that even a single comment [in another apps comment section] is appropriate. I should have used a word other than “misunderstanding”.
Also, my apologies, I did not know a rating was required to leave a comment on an app. However, the fact does not diminish my post directed at SG.
Wrong yes.but to the extent that the spam went to I don’t belive for a second that was there true intenitons.I also find that there in game system chat and forums are clearly makeing a serious point to stop it further.with them setting such harsh penalites for future spam I think they are truely sorry for the whole mishap.The game does not require you at all to use real world currency to play the game.this is a choice by the users to do so for there own satisfaction.great game.it will take the number 1 spot on the market reguardless.
@SG
Did you not read the whole article?
It explicitly said, and I quote: “Also, the developers didn’t start this and it is ending soon as we just sent a system-wide message out.”
This means that the developers of the actual game DID NOT tell their community to spam the market. It was the customer rep. Maybe you should pay a little more attention before crying over it.
Mandalore: Oh please, I was being facetious. I take it that you SUPPORT PE’s shenanigans? or are you the PE dev in disguise?
“The game does not require you at all to use real world currency to play the game.this is a choice by the users to do so for there own satisfaction.great game.”
Please.
The developers openly solicit their users to donate money in return for gems (which also breaks the Android markets terms of service) and encourage spam on the Android market in return for gems. You think the new source of gems that they will soon be making available will be free? Yeah – it is as much a choice for the users to spend money in PE as it is a choice for them to spend money on stuff in Evony.
And please – cut the crap about claiming that it was not the developers who encouraged this. The encouragement to spam also occurred in game. The Customer Representative REPRESENTS the developers. That is his job. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme.
The developers were politely requested by at least one other developer to stop the spam activity on their forums on the 23rd. The thread was summarily closed and deleted. The developers could easily have put a stop to the whole business right away then by suspending the referral system. They didn’t – despite it being clear already then that this was a huge problem. Instead they allowed the business to continue for a WEEK until they were forced to take action by Google.
Do the math.
At least my chat log got put to good use and its over now.
(And you may note, that I refused to spam. Go me.)
Come on. Holding pocket empires solely responsible for this is stupid they can’t control the actions of every player on their game. They are just trying to get their game out there. Also they are not the first game to have referral codes that give you bonus stuff in the game they just happened to grow to the biggest game with them and so hence had the problem. I think most of the people bitching about this would have done the same thing in their shoes, not thinking it would blow so out of hand like the dev of pocket empires did not think it would. Anyways last thing is that you people that said that the dev did nothing until threatened by Google are wrong and ignorant. They made several steps increasing steps from in game warning about spamming to banning players to making a huge nerf of how powerful the referral system is before finally just shutting it down. Should they have just shut it down to begin with? in hind site probably because it could not be brought into check with the steps they were trying but there was noway for them to know that. BTW just to clarify I have never made a comment for any game on the market place so I wasn’t a part of this but really the overreaction of this is kinda sad and just to expand on what Mandalore said you really need to grow up and learn a little respect. I find reading a post from you much more destructive to the integrity of the marketplace that one million spam posts. Good day!
As you say, Strattmk, there are plenty of games who have incentive codes. But those games don’t spam the market because their developers do not encourage spam. In other words – there are plenty of developers in the same shoes as PP who very clearly have not done what Pocket Play did.
As for your defense of the PP “response”, the facts are that PP ignored the requests of both developers and users on the Android market for more than a week until the public outcry grew so large that they were forced to react. And even then, they hedged their reaction (and flat out refused direct requests to stop the incentive system) for as long as possible until Google stepped in.
Pocket Play blatantly broke the terms of service of the Android Market. It is hardly an overreaction to expect that they be punished so that we can avoid another one million spam posts from other idiot developers. That you actually want to argue that this is the case plainly does not require further comment.